Share this:

I’m pretty sure everyone had a weird experience at least once in their blogging journey whether it was on social media or on their blogs. For example, a random man sending you inappropriate DMs or bloggers using your email to sign up on random websites or even worse to subscribe to their newsletters. The list goes on!

Small things like these are very common in the blogging industry and it happens to everyone but today I wanted to share with you some bizarre things that happened to me. Some of these things happened when I first started blogging that’s the reason why I feel comfortable sharing them now lol!

Of course, the main reason why I wanted to share them is to let you know that these things happen so don’t feel scared. If you’ve experienced anything similar, know that you are not alone in this situation. (Plus I wanted to say that the majority of the emails I get are really sweet and I appreciate them very much so thank you for taking the time to send them!)

STALKERS & WEIRD PEOPLE

an example

We all get these weird spam comments or emails but the ones I get are literally one a whole other level! I get some that say they know who I am and where I live, that they even saw me in real life – very stalker-ish I would say. Some even send me their phone numbers.

The most memorable one has to be an email from last year or the year before, someone wanted to donate their sperms. I know right, super weird! If you get disgusting emails/messages like these or even worse, just delete them and never look back at them.

PROFESSOR FROM HELL

This happened to me within a month after I’d started my blog and this is the one that’s probably the most disgusting out of everything I’ve got and seen. If you’ve been following me since the beginning, you would know that I didn’t used to write my blog in English and French, it was only written in English at the beginning.

Unless you read my blog thoroughly, you wouldn’t know I was French or I came from France, or even that I was a literature student. One day while I was at uni, I received an email and it was supposedly from a ‘French professor’. The email was written in French, he said that he wanted to talk to me about a research paper/book and he wanted my input on it and translate it into other languages since I was a literature student.

He added all his personal information including his full name, the university where he was teaching and his phone number. He told me that I only had to ring it once and he would pick it up right away (if money was an issue). The email was written very professionally and there wasn’t anything inappropriate written such as sentences/words with double meanings if you know what I mean – it seemed very legit. However I didn’t reply and I knew better than that. My blog was all about nail art and nail polishes, that person didn’t even know what my grades were but most importantly – why would he contact me in the first place?

If he was really a professor, I’m pretty sure he would ask someone in this field or even one of his students. Why me? Then next week he sent me another email. This one was completely contrasting to the previous one, it was very flirtatious and he wrote a poem to me (it was all about the moon, lune in french is moon -_-) and sent a couple of his pictures along. Don’t worry, it wasn’t any indecent pictures, he was just posing for the camera at an university.

At that point I thought someone was catfishing me, that they were using someone’s personal pictures and the real person in those pictures had no idea about it. The man in those pictures was in his forties/fifties, definitely a lot older than me since I was 18/19 at that time – plus that person knew how old I was so it was even weirder. During that time, he sent me multiple emails along the same lines.

This continued for weeks or even months I believe. By that point I thought he would leave me alone or got bored of it because I wasn’t replying or talking about it anywhere on my social media or blog (if that person was doing it for attention). After a couple of weeks, he asked me out on a date in Paris, he gave me the location, time and date – once again along with a couple of his pictures in that cafe.

He thought I was in Paris (because it was around the holidays) and if I wasn’t, he was ready to fly me out there which was literally unbelievable. I decided to do my research and find the ‘real’ person in those pictures because in my mind, he was catfishing and trying to impersonate another person.

I scanned and did a research on the pictures he sent me (the perks of being a computing student hehe) and found out that person was really a professor and teaching at a well-known university in Paris. But the information he gave me were very similar but completely wrong, the place and the subject he was teaching were completely wrong.

Obviously for me that made sense, someone was acting like him and who knows, they probably sent the same types of emails to many people online. I checked his Facebook page and found out that he was in a relationship and found other pictures with his friends & family but I couldn’t find any of the pictures that were sent to me – none.

I literally spent an entire weekend to find out if he had shared any of the pictures that were sent to me online whether it was on his Facebook or his friends & family Facebook pages.

Those pictures pretty much didn’t exist online and it pretty much confirmed that he was the one who was sending me those emails. Even thinking about it now, I still get disgusted by it. It just shows how predators can act and you can never trust anyone whether it’s in real life or in the digital world.

HEARTBREAKER

Within 3/4 months after I’d created my blog, I started to receive weird emails in my inbox but I assumed those were just scams or junk emails. I never opened them because I didn’t want any viruses to infiltrate my laptop but I knew they weren’t from brands or normal people because the subject of those emails didn’t make any sense at all.

This went on for weeks and every single time, I’d delete those emails and never look at them again. Then one day, I received an email which was completely out of the blue. That email claimed to be from a man and stated that he was very interested about me and he wanted to ask me out on a date.

Obviously in my mind, I thought it was one of those online weirdos or perverts (since I already experienced it). I immediately deleted it. The next week I received another email which was very similar to the first one I’d received but it was from another man. That week I received a number of emails from different men, written differently but they all had one thing in common. They were all interested in me and wanted to date me.

I don’t want to go into details what was written in those emails but you can definitely get the gist of it. At that point, I thought some weird men found my blog and were messaging me but still that didn’t make any sense to me. It would make sense to send those emails to someone who was quite successful in the blogging industry or even to someone who was showing their face (which I’m not saying it’s okay to send these types of emails to them but you get what I’m trying to say).

I never mentioned my name on my blog, never showed my face, wasn’t ‘active’ on social media and my blog was all about nail art! I was pretty much the last person you would think to send those types of email. That week I decided to clean my spam folder (thank god!) to see if I had received any important emails. I was literally hoping to see an email from a brand but what I saw was the complete opposite to say the least.

I received a ton of notifications from a dating website, and remember the emails I was talking about at the beginning! Those emails were from this dating website! Someone had used my blog email address to sign up on that website but it doesn’t stop there, oh no..

They literally filled the profile information as me or shall I say my blog. You read it right, my blog. They put the first name as ‘New’ and last name as ‘Lune’. What’s wrong with them? They were definitely a regular reader because they guessed most things right about me such as my age and where I was living (country).

That dating website wasn’t secure or professional at all, the user interface was a headache, they didn’t even have a number or email to contact that’s how bad that website was. Considering it was a dating website, I just didn’t get how people thought it was safe to use it. It was pretty much one of the reasons why that person was able to use my email address, it didn’t even send a verification number or email in order to use that website.

The men who were sending me these emails came from that website and they were sending me emails directly instead of using that dating website. After a couple of months, everything stopped. I received one or two emails the following month and after that I never got one. I never found out who did it either.

BE CAREFUL

The moral of these stories is definitely to be careful on the internet. It doesn’t matter what age or gender you are, there are so many creepy people online. I’m not saying you shouldn’t share anything private online but be careful with every single thing you share whether it’s your picture, name, the town you live, etc.

You can never be too careful and at the end of the day, I want you all to be safe. I’d love to know your creepy or weird blogging experience(s) – if you have experienced any, share it with me below and we can all be aware of those things!

I have the odd spam and I mean just the odd one. I have never experienced what you have experienced, so it was shocking to read how someone would go out of their way to sign you up to a dating site.

As for other emails I get in my inbox for my blog, it usually just requests for guest posts or to add links, which shows they have not read my blog properly, because if they had, they will find very clearly I don’t do this, so I ignore. It’s been a while since this has happened since, so hopefully people read my blog properly before attempting such a request, as so they don’t waste their time.

I’ve encountered some weird people haha 😅 It happens to a lot of bloggers, it doesn’t matter how many times you mention it or it could be written at the top of your contact page, some people would still contact you about unnecessary things.

This is really interesting but also creepy to read. I’m sorry you had to experience all of this. I also had some spam receiving but the worst was the bullying which happened a few months ago. The same person wrote hurtful comments about me. I’m thankful it stopped. It isn’t nice to deal with it. I’m glad it stopped by you too.

Oh my goodness, this is so creepy. I’ve never had anything like this happen to me (yet!) and I sincerely hope I don’t. I do get the odd spam comment but fortunately, I have to approve all my comments before they go live so I just delete those. I’m glad you can be so level-headed about this and thank you for sharing your experiences – as you say, you can’t trust people online, which is a shame, but it’s good to be on your guard! X

Oh My Yes!! My blog is still very new, but I am constantly getting these creeps on social media. They are so disgusting. And then there are the ones after your money too! Oh boy do they come up with some really off the wall stories! LOL Seems like the more you tell to stay away, the more crawl out from under the rocks…

What the heck, man! These are so creepy, especially that professor one!! I like that you did some investigative work on it though lol. I can’t believe it was the real guy sending you the emails – I definitely thought it was a case of catfishing.

Nothing like this has ever happened to me in my few years of blogging…I guess I should count myself lucky!

These are all awful experiances – I can’t believe there are people in this world who thinks its okay or fun to use other people’s information for their own personal gain. Thank you so much for sharing something like this x

Most of these things happened to me while I barely had 300 followers on my blog and social media platforms. I don’t think the number of your followers matters in these instances. Unfortunately some people encounter some weirdos online 😅

Oh I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with all of this! I’ve had a few dodgy messages but nothing quite as strange as you’ve had! It’s a little bit scary when you think about it.
Soph – https://sophhearts.com x

Wow! I’ve had my fair share of spam emails and get way more than my fair share of gross DMs and such but nothing quite this level! It’s awful when you think about it. At least most of us are internet savvy enough these days to be careful about these things x

I think this is the main reason why I stopped using Facebook. I got really aware that too much data was being shared on this platform (before it even became a problem and before the privacy laws kicked in). So glad I made that decision.

Back when I was active on Facebook, I have had weird men add me – we’re talking men old enough to be my dad, from a foreign country, no mutual friends. One time, a guy who was just a bit older than me at the time (I was 18/19) added me and I actually added him back because we had a few mutual friends. Huge mistake! How do I put it…he was really weird and almost immediately flirty. He turned out to be a best friend of my high school classmate so in a way, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt but honestly, I think women’s instincts are completely different to men’s! He asked me out a good few times on there through FB chat and each time I said no but he was so persistent. Eventually, I learnt he also happened to be an ex of my then-classmate. I asked my then-classmate about him and it’s funny – she said she broke up with him because he was coming onto her too strong! One night, I remember being super freaked out because he was standing outside my part-time workplace. Ugh. Luckily nothing happened and everything stopped after he realised he was getting nothing from me but it was such a bad experience!

Currently, on Instagram I am getting some men trying to talk to me. Luckily, IG is pretty good at placing those messages completely separate to those of your friends. Sometimes I click on these accounts and they have a lot in common – middle-aged men, possibly some sort of profile suggesting that they want to find a wife/date. It makes me sick.

I’m so glad I deleted my Facebook account before all the privacy laws & data breach happened. Oh my god! That’s super creepy 😖 I’m so glad nothing happened and you’re okay, it’s such a scary experience! Unfortunately, Instagram is all about those creeps. I don’t even show my face and I receive those types of private messages, that shows how desperate some men are smh x

I get tons of spam in my WordPress spam folder, mostly all rubbish, but a few genuine comments can also end up in there.
I’ve never given out my email address on my blog. If anybody wants to contact me, they have to go through WordPress first by way of a ‘Contact Hugh’ form on my blog. I see so many bloggers giving out their email address on blog posts. It’s a sure way of attracting lots of unwanted attention and spam.
For me, Trolls have been the biggest issue. Some of the comments I have received have been disgusting and horrible. It’s one reason why I have all comments go to a moderate queue first so I can check them before approving them to show in the comments section of my blog posts. I can also block any further comments from trolls so that I no longer see them.
You did right by not replying to any of those emails. Trolls soon get fed up and will move on if you don’t respond to them

Oh my gosh, how strange! It’s actually really worrying the number of odd people there are about. fortunately, I’ve only had a couple but I just delete them and don’t look back like you say. What is wrong with people?!! x

Wow, you have certainly had a few weirdos! Poor you! I’ve had a few spam comments which are like massive essays which have nothing to do with the post, but they just get deleted straight away. Your experiences sound really creepy, you did the right thing by ignoring them! Thanks for sharing, really interesting read ❤ xx

So weird! It just proves how you never really know who you’re talking to, I mean I get weird spam comments but yours are crazy girl, great post though, really unique! and you’re definitely right for ignoring those emails! xx

omg I’m so glad I haven’t had any creepy emails like that! Though I somehow started getting spam emails from brands promoting adult toys, WTF. There are so many creeps out there and I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with that.

I don’t know whether to laugh or to laugh. Yeah, you read that right. 😂 While your experience is creepy, it’s actually very funny. I love to check my spam comments every Saturday. It does wonders to my mood. 😂
There are crazy people living among us.

This was such an interesting read! Some people are so weird and creepy. I have no idea what goes through some people’s heads to do the things they do. But it is so important to be careful online. I’ve definitely had my fair share of weird comments and messages as well. It’s so freaky x

Good cautions – people put too much of their personal information out there, and then wonder how strangers know so much about them. They also take too many people they don’t know at face value.
All I get on my blog are the usual self-serving spam comments designed to generate traffic to someone else’s site.
thanx for writing!